Before reading this article, make sure you familiarise yourself with the audio terms in the glossary of terms page. Perhaps keep it open in a new tab so you can refer to it as needed.
Foreword
Capturing analog audio has the lucky advantage that it requires a relatively small amount of storage by today's standards, even if recorded in a high quality format like 24/96 or greater. It is one of the simpler outcomes to achieve and is therefore easily rewarding as a first start into digital archiving.
Storage Requirements - Let's say you used to play in a band and you have some old audio cassettes of band practices lying around. There are three songs at 3.5 minutes each (total 10.5 minutes) on your old cassette tape.
Capture Quality options / Consumed space
- HD Audio - Approximately 345MB at 24bit / 96kHz. In today's hard drives, this is miniscule.
- CD Quality - Approximately 105MB - Use if space is an issue, or the content doesn't warrant the extra size, this is still a high quality capture, excellent for voice, though if I were capturing music I would store it in i
- Compressed MP3 - If you're feeling dangerous, capturing to MP3's highest quality setting will set you back a total of 24MB for the same thing. There is little point in reducing the bit rate further, when you consider the minimal space this takes up as is.
This is easy to calculate using whatever settings you're interested in with an online calculator such as this one.
Overview of equipment needed
There is more than one way to do this task. As you may have read, we will cover off three different methods to suit three types of individuals. For all methods listed, the bare minimum is a player and a computer (assuming the player has a built in USB port). Getting a bit more quality out of the system an analog capture system needs to be added
- For the Impatient - Cassette Player with USB out / SD Card Saving ability, Computer Optional
- For the Libran - Rack Mount Cassette Deck, Digital Audio Interface, Computer Required
- For the Perfectionist - High Quality Second Hand Cassette Deck, High Quality Digital Audio Interface, Computer Required
